Monday, October 15, 2012

New Power Supply

Someone had a question about my power supply so I thought I would post a pic. It hasn't arrived yet and it has been 4 weeks. I usually receive items sent with USPS within 3 weeks so if I don't get it in the next few days I will have to start tracking it down (bummer). In any case, this is what I am waiting for:

These have become quite popular for Repraps. They are small (only about 8x10 inches) yet provide enough current to support dual extruders and a heated bed. My whole rig should only draw about 16 amps when everything is running so this has lots of extra capacity. You have to add a power cord and a switch but that is fairly straightforward. There is also a switch on them to change between 120v and 220v so they can be used anywhere.

Thingiverse has a couple of printable end-caps for these that help to clean up the looks and cover the exposed terminals. I would like to design and print a case that will contain the power supply, the Ramps boards and the LCD Controller panel. This would either sit beside the printer or mount to the side of it (for portability).

I tried to install the QU BD extruders on my X-carriage this weekend but ran into a couple of problems. The first one was that the extruder barrel is quite short. It would not reach beyond the bottom of the X-carriage until I removed the carriage and cut off the tabs that held bolts for tightening the bearing clamps. Actually the bolts don't seem to be necessary as the clamps hold the bearings tightly enough without them. The second issue is that the extruder motor (I am only installing one to start with) hits the belt clamps when I try to install it. I may have to come up with some modification to the belt clamps to get this to work but it shouldn't be too difficult. I may be able to just flip the clamps to the bottom of the carriage instead of the top.